Google Expanding Kansas City Network Experiment

Google’s high-speed broadband experiment in Kansas City has evidently proven successful enough for the company to consider an expansion. Starting in 2013, an additional five neighborhoods will receive Google Fiber.

The neighborhoods in question include Piper Schools, Delaware Ridge, Painted Hills, Open Door, and Arrowhead, which will join Hanover Heights and Dub’s Dread. Installation in the new neighborhoods will begin in the first half of the year.

Google first began connecting homes in Kansas City to the Google Fiber network in November. The company claims that the infrastructure will pay off for community businesses in need of a big broadband pipe for Big Data, as well as schools and households that want faster downloads.

“Gigabit speeds will get rid of these pesky, archaic problems and open up new opportunities for the Web,” read a note posted on the Google Fiber Blog this past summer. “Imagine: instantaneous sharing; truly global education; medical appointments with 3D imaging; even new industries that we haven’t even dreamed of, powered by a gig.”

Other cities are perking up to the idea of installing a widespread high-speed network. The government of Seattle recently announced it had entered into an agreement with broadband developer Gigabit Squared to develop and operate such a network within the city.

In addition to installing high-speed fiber in 50,000 homes and businesses across 12 neighborhoods (which will also have access to wireless services), the project will set up a dedicated broadband wireless umbrella capable of beaming the Web to businesses and houses.

Seattle has detailed its reasons for pursuing the initiative on a project Website, Gigabitseattle.com: more rapid collaboration and innovation for businesses, better quality of (Internet) life for residents, a more interconnected community for more efficient public health and safety initiatives. Those reasons echo those offered by Google with regard to Kansas City. But it remains to be seen whether other cities, interested in similar things, will take up high-speed broadband initiatives of their own.